1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to methods of making a magnetic read sensor. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to methods of making a magnetic read sensor utilizing a super shallow laminated hard mask stencil.
2. Description of the Related Art
The heart of a computer is a magnetic disk drive which typically includes a rotating magnetic disk, a slider that has read and write heads, a suspension arm above the rotating disk and an actuator arm that swings the suspension arm to place the read and/or write heads over selected circular tracks on the rotating disk. The suspension arm biases the slider towards the surface of the disk when the disk is not rotating but, when the disk rotates, air is swirled by the rotating disk and the adjacent air bearing surface (ABS) of the slider causes the slider to ride on an air bearing with a slight distance from the surface of the rotating disk. When the slider rides on the air bearing, the write and read heads are employed for writing magnetic impressions to and reading magnetic signals from the rotating disk. The read and write heads are connected to processing circuitry that operates according to a computer program to implement the writing and reading functions.
To construct a read head, a plurality of sensor layers are deposited across the surface of a substrate. One or more mask layers are deposited over the sensor layers and a series of photolithographic processes and reactive ion etch (RIE) processes are then conducted to form a mask stencil above the sensor layers. An ion milling process then removes unmasked portions of the sensor layers to define the shape, profile and dimension (such as track width) of the read head sensor.
In order to achieve greater data storage density on the magnetic media, magnetic data bits are written in increasingly smaller sizes. The read head is therefore fabricated with a reduced track width to properly read the smaller sized data bits. Therefore, there is a need in the art for an improved method for forming the narrow read head.